My phone just gave me another warning: Storage almost full.

Again.

I take a lot of photos. Not always for an audience, not to curate a perfect life, but to gather crumbs — breadcrumbs in the forest of my life. Each image a small, shining proof that I saw, felt, touched, loved. That moment mattered.

A blurry photo of my granddaughter’s toothless grin. The steam of a morning chai, curling toward a window stained with raindrops. My granddaughter’s tiny hand wrapped around my thumb. My dad’s tired eyes. My grandmother’s copper coffee pot, sitting on the stove in the kitchen. A pink flower in full bloom or autumn leaves dancing in the breeze.

I try to transfer the photos to my laptop, or to an external hard drive — but even then, I eventually run out of space. Life never stops unfolding. The rhythm of life never lets up. Memory keeps filling. And still, more memories arrive — new ones rushing in daily, elbowing their way into whatever space they can find.

And lately, I’ve noticed it’s not just the devices.

I’ve lived enough decades now that my mind feels like a brimming attic. Dusty boxes labelled “Childhood” and “First Love” sit next to slightly disorganised piles marked “The Year Everything Changed” and “What I Should Have Said.” There are folders I rarely open, and some I revisit so often that the edges are worn soft.

Maybe I should add new labels:
“My Near-Death Experiences.”
“The Darkest Days of My Life.”
“The Lost Friendships” or “Those No Longer With Us.”

And then — there’s a folder simply called “God With Me.”

It’s not loud or demanding. It doesn’t take up much space. But it runs like a thread through every other folder — woven into “Gratitude”, stitched into “Survival”, quietly present even in the folder named “Regret”.

It holds the prayers I couldn’t find words for. The moments I felt seen when no one else was looking. The strength I drew on when mine was gone. It holds the long walks where silence became sacred, and the comfort of knowing I was never truly alone — even when it felt like it.

Some memories are mine.
Some I shared with others.
And some — I shared only with God.

Some people run from their pasts, as if memory is a ghost they hope will lose interest.
Not me.

To me, the past is like a cast, set gently over the clay of who I was becoming. I would not be this woman, sitting here with a full phone and a full heart, without all of it — the cracks, the joy, the missteps, the mercy.

Evenings often find me wandering through my own mental museum, rearranging exhibits. I walk through corridors of laughter and grief, running my fingers over frames hung slightly crooked. And every now and then, I stop in front of a memory I haven’t seen in years — and I remember why I kept it. Other times, I find one that’s lost its shape, softened at the edges, and I wonder whether I’ve remembered it wrong all along.

Some say they have no folders marked “Regrets.”
Yet I would argue with that.

I don’t think any of us can live our lives without regrets.
And I think it’s wise to admit them, too.

So yes — I have a folder called “Regret”.
It’s not the largest, and I don’t visit it every day. But it’s there, quietly tucked between “Hard Lessons” and “What I Would Do Differently If I Knew Then What I Know Now.”

Even the regrets have a role. They remind me that I was trying, learning, stretching toward something more. That I have always cared enough to wish I’d done better. And perhaps, that means I still can.

That’s the thing, I think. The point isn’t to keep every photo, every memory.
It’s to know what they meant when you took them.
To know why that moment called to you.
Why you wanted to remember it.

And then there are the moments that don’t fit into folders at all.

Giving birth to my first child — terrified and brave and overwhelmed to the core by love. I still hear my midwife’s gentle voice telling me I deserved a cup of tea after giving birth — simple words that felt like a blessing.

Holding my granddaughter for the first time, singing to her and feeling time fold in on itself.
The tears that came uninvited when my grandson took his first shaky steps, arms outstretched like wings.
Sometimes I catch myself in the soft rhythm of rocking a grandchild, and I feel it — the ache and wonder of having become the nanna they run to for warmth, just as I once did with mine.

And tucked away is a folder still: “Finland”.

My childhood summers. The cool hush of the forest, the warmth of the sauna followed by the daring plunge into the lake. The feeling of wet grass underfoot. My grandmother’s voice singing something soft, half-hummed, that felt like safety. I still return to those days in my dreams, walking barefoot into the past, the lake still waiting, the sky still burning in Nordic twilight.

I don’t have photos of everything.
Some of the most important things in my life never made it onto film. They live only in the breath between heartbeats. In the way a certain smell takes me back thirty, forty, fifty years. In the way my hands move when I bake, just like my grandmother’s did.

And so, I keep storing.
But I also keep honouring.

By writing it down.
By speaking it aloud.
By sitting with a grandchild and whispering, “Did I ever tell you about the summer the sun didn’t set?”

Because while my phone might run out of space,
and the attic of my mind may overflow,
my heart —
my heart is still making room.

For first steps and final goodbyes.
For grandchildren yet to be born.
For laughter and tears.
For places I’ve yet to stand barefoot in —
and the quiet ache of standing once more where I used to belong.
For faces I’ve yet to meet,
and those from my past I long to see again.
For the stories still waiting to be lived,
waiting to be shared.

Because new memories don’t run out.
They keep flowing into my heart with every breath.
And I want to gather them all —
to tuck them gently into the folds of my heart.

Because my heart will always find room
for one more memory.

Always.